


In Spite of Ourselves

by windfallswest



Series: Love or War [7]
Category: Marvel, Marvel 616, New Warriors, Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Meet the Family, Secret Identity Fail, Smut, Superpower Sex, ceiling sex, clone problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 16:28:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5055742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clones and secret identities: it's a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Spite of Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> Caution: do not try this at home.

It was good to be back in New York. Events kept conspiring to keep Vance away: first the Initiative and the fight against Osborn, then teaching at the Academy, exploring what seemed like every blue road in America with Robbie, and now being sort of based in Europe. Sure, the Infinite Mansion had been, well, infinite, with doors that opened anyplace in the world; but the Underspace was still another dimension and you couldn't open the windows. 

With Sil and Selah both still having commitments in the city, though, the mountain was spending a lot of time parked off Long Beach, a respectful distance away from both land and New Attilan. It couldn't hurt to give Mark access to other Inhumans, although he was understandably a bit gun-shy. 

Vance had commitments around the boroughs, too. He had started volunteering at a community centre in Bed-Stuy after he learned Hybrid had been killed. Credibility was an uphill battle for anyone there, let alone a white guy, and he'd been slacking. 

After so long away, the people, scents, and noises—even the obnoxious ones—were like coming home. The best times of Vance's life had been in this city. Of course, so had some of the worst.

Nostalgia or not, Vance wasn't about to take the subway all the way from Brooklyn to Chelsea, and he was supposed to be meeting Ben Grim for dinner. He ducked into an alley so as not to be the cause of any car accidents and launched himself upwards.

The skies were pretty empty today. Vance saw someone who might have been one of the newer Avengers over the East Village and a bright light that could have been Sunspot or the Human Torch in the distance as he was coming in for a landing, but otherwise things were quiet.

Vance touched down circumspectly several blocks from the restaurant. One thing he _didn't_ miss about New York was the press. He had it better than Ben, at least, who'd have been recognised everywhere he went even without being so physically distinctive. Granted, what publicity Ben got as the Thing of the Fantastic Four was generally positive. 

Lost in thought, Vance rounded a corner. A familiar figure was walking the opposite way down the sidewalk. 

"Kaine!" Vance exclaimed in surprise. He'd been under the impression that Kaine couldn't get far enough from New York.

Kaine spun around in a seeming panic. His eyes widened when they landed on Vance.

"You should have told me you were in...town..." Vance trailed off. Something wasn't right here. This guy was way too skinny to be Kaine. He was wearing an actual suit, one that wasn't made out of spandex in any way. And Kaine only shaved intermittently. "What are you _wearing_?"

The guy's eyes were as big as saucers. He looked terrified instead of furious; that was enough to tip Vance off that this wasn't Kaine even without the missing fifty pounds of muscle.

He still looked _familiar_. Something in his body-language, the way he held himself. But it wasn't quite Kaine this guy reminded him of, it was—

"Holy _shit_ ," Vance swore. "I am so sorry."

He hurried down the street in the direction he'd been heading, mind reeling, and forced himself not to look back. _Oh my god. I think I just saw Spider-Man's face._

 

Vance did his best to shake it off. It was just one face among millions of faces; he could spend the rest of his life wandering up and down the island without seeing the guy again. Meanwhile, Vance was really looking forward to catching up with Ben Grimm. He had met Ben during the mess where his powers got jump-started, and he'd been something of a mentor ever since. From the sound of things, he had had a rough time of it lately. 

True to Vance's predictions, there were already people taking pictures with their smartphones. But this was Manhattan and Ben lived here—and was, face it, The Ever-Loving Blue-Eyed Thing—so mostly people took pictures with their smartphones as they walked by and didn't make an effort to piss him off.

The hug Ben greeted him with made Vance glad he'd remembered to put up a shield. Grinning, Vance returned it, lifting him off of his feet.

Ben let loose with a surprised laugh. "Put me me down, ya snot-nosed punk!" 

"I just thought your feet might get tired, old-timer," Vance said innocently, letting him go.

"Why I oughta..."

The restaurant was in an old building with a lot of architectural oddities, which meant more privacy than you usually got at this price-range. Also, the sandwiches were bigger than Vance's face. 

They talked for a long time, and Vance almost managed to put the Spider-Man thing out of his mind. The news he had had about the disintegration and reformation of the Fantastic Four had been fragmented at best. Ben was in the middle of a description of how Reed Richards and Sue Storm's three-year-old daughter had saved the world from some kind of invasion when his phone went off.

"Just a minute, sorry," he told Vance, pulling out a smartphone that was almost the size of a tablet. Touch screens were the best things to happen to cell-phones as far as Ben was concerned, since he could get buttons programmed in a size he could use. And, as he'd told Vance before, needing a bigger screen meant you could actually see the picture on netflix.

"Heya, Spidey." Vance stopped chewing. "Got a problem you can't fix with silly-string? What? Yeah, I'm with him, actually. Do you want I should—yeah, I'll ask him. Spidey wants to know if you can meet him ten-ish on top of the New York Times building."

Vance swallowed. "Sure."

The look Ben levelled at him contained a lot more perception than most people gave him credit for. Vance tried not to look guilty. "You know what this is about?"

"Uh, probably." Ben still didn't look convinced. "Nothing messy, I promise."

"Uh-huh. You get that, Spidey? Great. Get his number while you're at it; I ain't your secretary." Spider-Man said something. "Don't go pushing your luck, kid." Another pause. "Ah, shaddup. You're bothering me."

Ben set the phone down and fixed Vance with a sharp-eyed stare. Vance cleared his throat.

"So, Valeria?" he asked hopefully.

 

It was actually closer to ten-thirty when Spider-Man swung onto the roof. Vance, who'd been hovering in lieu of standing, touched down a few feet away.

"Sorry," Spider-Man apologised. "There was a thing; I got held up. Well, not me so much as a liquor store. But it's all good now. Sorry for smelling like a gin-mill."

"Occupational hazard. Here." Vance tossed him a slightly greasy paper bag. "We were at dinner when you called."

"Hey, sandwich!" Spider-Man cocked his head suspiciously. "You just want to see me with my mask off again."

Vance winced. "About that. You don't have to worry; I don't know your name. Just a guy in New York who looks like Kaine, right? I knew that much before, really."

"Yeah, about Kaine." Spider-Man scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "I don't know how you got mixed up with him again—"

"What do you mean, again?" Vance interrupted.

"What, you don't remember the crazy grunge dude in black pyjamas who was always stalking the original Scarlet Spider? He used to hang out with you guys, right? I realise everybody was a Spider-Man clone back then, so it got kind of confusing..."

Searching his recollection, Vance dimly recalled that Spider-Man had busted up a courthouse with someone named Kaine, who'd confessed to framing a photojournalist for murder and then blew up a diner. "...I hadn't actually made that connexion. Is that what was going on with all the switching around of spiders and costumes?"

"Long, convoluted story, totally not relevant. Um, so this is kind of awkward, but...he, um, he died recently. He's dead."

A welter of emotions all started screaming at once before logic kicked in. Vance had seen Kaine less than a week ago, and he wasn't the type to go down quietly. He'd have heard about it from somewhere. The news. Aracely. Something. Was this related to whatever it was that had happened that he refused to talk about on the other side of that dimensional portal? "No, he's not; I just saw him last week. Why would you think that?"

It was Spider-Man's turn to be taken aback. "Wait, what? Are you sure it's him? Because there was this whole big spider thing a little while back and while clones are confusing enough, it's _really_ hard to tell the difference between clones and alternate reality duplicates and clones of alternate reality duplicates, believe you me."

"I'm...pretty sure it's really him. Someone wanted him enough to come through the rest of us; I'd never seen him before, but he was serious bad news."

"Super-confusing spider-army took care of that whole crew. No need to thank us."

"Thank you," Vance said, with feeling. "Kaine was gone by the time I came around. Then, a couple weeks ago, he reappeared out of nowhere in the middle of our base with a lot of extra hair and no tattoo." 

"Kaine got a—wait, how have you seen my clone's tattoos? Or, hey, his face, for that matter?" Spider-Man asked belatedly.

"Well, I, uh..." Vance stammered awkwardly and felt his face heating.

The bug eyes on Spider-Man's mask seemed to grow even wider. " _Kaine?_ And _you_? But he's my—" he paused for a moment, clearly side-tracked by the implications for his own sexual identity. "Well, I mean, I guess I've known Kaine and I are different for a long time," he concluded at last.

An awkward silence stretched between them. Spider-Man fidgeted. The costume made it even clearer that this wasn't Kaine in front of him. It wasn't just the iconic design: Spider-Man was leaner, and while the muscle-definition was there, he was wiry to the point of being thin, like everything he'd been through had worn away anything the least bit unnecessary. He had a different energy, somewhere between nervous and hyper, that refused to be still.

"Hey do you mind?" Spider-Man asked, pulling out the face-sized sandwich. "It's been nonstop all night."

They sat on the edge of the building with their feet dangling over the side. Spider-Man rolled his mask up over his mouth, taking enormous bites. Vance felt like he ought to remind him to chew. 

"I feel even worse now about how things went with the original Scarlet Spider," Vance said, idly kicking his heels against the concrete. "I just thought he didn't trust us; but he wasn't protecting _his_ identity: he was protecting yours."

"Clones and secret identities: it's a problem."

"Evidently," Vance agreed dryly. Down below, someone screamed. "Do you want to get that, or should I?"

Spider-Man's grin was briefly visible before he pulled his mask back down.

 

"So, what brings you to our fair metropolis?" Spider-Man asked, webbing the purse-snatcher to a brick wall while Vance held him in place. "Moving back here now that you've got the band back together?"

"As far as I know, Kaine's staying in Houston," Vance answered the unspoken question. "Our current base is, uh, pretty mobile, though. I've been trying to help some of the at-risk kids in Bed-Stuy since Hybrid was killed." He should probably look into getting a paying job one of these days, too.

Spider-Man snorted. "They must _love_ you there."

Vance smiled wryly. "I get through to some of them. The record's actually useful, for once."

"I take it Hybrid was a friend of yours."

"Scott was one of my guards at the Vault. He was a good man. Doing the right thing cost him his job, his legs, his brother, and his life. He really cared about his community; he wanted to make things better for people." 

They ascended once more to the rooftops, Manhattan's night-time glitter sprawled below them.

"I'm sorry I didn't know him better."

Spider-Man seemed to want to talk about anything else but Kaine. _Gee, who does that remind me of?_ Kaine had come by it honestly, at least. Vance wasn't about to complain: being grilled about his love-life once in a night was enough as far as he was concerned, and Ben Grimm hadn't stopped until he was well done.

"Hey, when are you guys going to be in town again?" Spider-Man asked, at an hour when even the criminals were seeking their beds instead of their fortunes.

"We should be sticking around for a while, unless something comes up," Vance told him.

"So you can meet up again tomorrow? Same Spider time, same Spider-channel?" Spider-Man asked. "I'll let you know if I'm going to be late again—oh! I tried to reach you on your Avengers card, but it didn't go through for some reason; you should get that looked at. Wouldn't want to miss the next alien invasion."

Vance coughed awkwardly. "No, I, uh, I gave it back. It's a long story. I may have been a little pissed off."

"Uh, yeah." The big spider-eyes stared at him. "Okay. Tomorrow, then."

 

It was raining the next night, but Spider-Man was only fifteen minutes late. Vance didn't mind waiting. _Of course_ he'd wait: it was _Spider-Man_. There was still a not insignificant part of him that wanted to ask for his autograph, except that that would be incredibly uncool. And, the more Vance thought about it, kind of weird, considering he was seeing the man's clone. Seeing? What the hell were they doing, anyway? Vance had to start figuring this relationship out.

"Gang-way!" 

Spider-Man flipped past, dropping his web-line and landed in a crouch on the rooftop. Vance extended the shield he was using for an umbrella out over him. Spider-Man looked up.

"Your powers are totally unfair. Sorry I'm late—"

"—but you got held up again?"

"No, just couldn't get away. Actually, I need to get back. But I have something for Kaine; I was wondering if you could give it to him the next time you see him." Spider-Man slipped what looked like a backpack made of webbing off his shoulders and handed it to Vance. "I wasn't sure if Kaine's costume survived Spidermania. So, uh, I pulled together a couple. They're basically the same as the last one, just a few minor tweaks. And there are things on the wrists for his stingers."

Vance accepted the sticky bundle. "Thanks. I'll make sure he gets them."

"Cool. Catch you later."

Spider-Man turned to leave, then hesitated. "Hey, is he...okay?"

Vance paused, seriously considering the question. "Well, he's Kaine."

"...Yeah."

"Okay is not really the word. But we've got each other's backs," Vance told him.

 

"Kaine?" Vance knocked on the door to Kaine's apartment a few days later.

"It's open."

"No, it's not."

Kaine's sigh was audible through the door. But then, it wasn't much of a door. "Haven't we had this conversation before?"

Vance reached around and slid the deadbolt from the other side. When he opened the door, he found Kaine eating cereal while stuck to the wall over the kitchen island because he still didn't have chairs. The only piece of furniture outside the bedroom was a couch that looked about ten years older than Vance. 

He reached into his messenger bag and tossed the new uniforms at Kaine. They hit him in the face. _Oops_.

Kaine snatched them off his head and held them up for inspection. "Huh. Where'd these come from?"

"I ran into your brother in Manhattan the other day. Turns out he thought you were dead for some reason," Vance said conversationally.

Kaine made a face. "And I suppose you couldn't let him keep on thinking that?"

Vance crossed his arms and gave him a flat look. 

"Of course _you_ couldn't. What?"

The noise of a car door slamming had drawn Vance's attention to the window. He looked down. "Are the police coming for your landlord or for you?"

Kaine abandoned the uniforms in favour of his Rice Krispies. "How many?"

Vance shook his head, at Kaine, or maybe himself. "It's just one guy."

Kaine nodded. "They're not that stupid, and Texas is fond of overwhelming force. It's fine." 

There was a knock at the door. Vance looked at Kaine, trying to decide what the chances were of this ending with him back on the road to Mexico. _And what, Super Tights, do you intend on doing if that's where this is headed?_

"Are you going to get that?"

"Not without a warrant," Kaine said, loudly enough for— _the cops_ —whoever was on the opposite side of the door to hear.

The knocker let himself in. It was the police officer—lieutenant, Vance corrected himself. He didn't look hostile; he looked amused. "Kiss my ass."

"Not in front of my boyfriend."

The lieutenant fixated on Vance like a hound pointing. Vance shot a quick glance at Kaine, who had finished the fucking cereal at last and jumped off the wall to dump his bowl in the sink, oblivious to the elephant he'd just let into the room. 

_At least this doesn't look like an arrest._ And Vance knew better than to wait on Kaine for introductions. He stuck his hand out. "Vance Astrovik, lieutenant. Pleasure to meet you."

"Wally Layton." 

Layton; that made sense. Aracely had mentioned him. They shook hands.

Layton cocked an eyebrow at Kaine. "I didn't take you for the type."

Kaine returned the look evenly, somehow managing just by the way he was standing to convey that his sexual boundaries were about ten light-years beyond what either Vance or Layton were comfortable with. Kaine frequently won games of chicken simply by not bluffing. 

Layton cleared his throat uncomfortably and turned back to Vance. "Have I seen you somewhere before?"

"There were some APBs out a couple years ago. Osborn," Vance explained. It was probably the most benign of the available possibilities.

"Yeah, he didn't really like you guys."

"That's super-villains for you."

The corners of Layton's mouth twitched upwards. "Well, if you're the one who helped Kaine take down Choke, you're all right by me."

Vance's expression grew strained. "That was either fun or traumatising; I'm still not sure which."

"What do you say we all go out to dinner sometime? Show you the nicer side of Houston," Layton offered cordially.

Kaine's head snapped up. Vance pretended he hadn't noticed anything.

"I'd like that," he said sincerely. "I've heard a lot about you and your husband from Aracely."

Kaine's eyes narrowed.

"How is she? Y'all had better be taking good care of her," Layton warned, also ignoring Kaine.

"She's in town, too. She said something about wanting to stop and see a friend."

Kaine winced visibly. Layton caught it and bit his lip in an unsuccessful attempt to fight down a smirk. _Interesting._

All Layton said, though, was, "Tell that girl she'd better be in touch. We miss her."

They exchanged contact information and Lieutenant Layton left, smiling beneficently at the muscle jumping in Kaine's jaw.

"So, I'm getting introduced as your boyfriend now." That had been a pleasant surprise.

"We have sex all the time; that's what you call it, right?"

"And apparently you don't bite anyone else's ass in front of me."

Kaine glowered and growled, "I'm not biting anyone else's fucking anything."

"Well, that's good to know," Vance said, a little of his frustration leaking into his voice.

"Great. Glad we had this little talk."

"I'll take whatever I can get," Vance muttered.

Kaine threw up his hands. "What do you want from me? I've never done this before."

 _Oh my god._ "...Oh my god, you haven't. That explains a lot."

"Fuck you," Kaine said, his shoulders hunched protectively. Abruptly, he looked like he'd rather be anywhere else.

Vance closed the distance between them. The simple act of reaching out could dissipate a lot of tension, but first you had to realise it was an option. "Let's start with that, then. A little clarity now and then can be very helpful in a relationship. For example: it's absolutely okay with me if you want to say we're boyfriends. I also wouldn't mind actually dating you."

Kaine stood there wearing an expression like he'd just got smacked in the face with a board. Vance reached out. Just a hand on Kaine's chest. At first nothing happened, but after a minute some of the stiffness went out of his shoulders. Vance slid his hand slowly up and around to the back of Kaine's neck, pulling him in near enough to kiss.

Tilting his head, Kaine pressed their mouths together almost hesitantly. For a moment, the kiss was breathtakingly sweet, lips barely parted, drawing each other close. Then it broke deeper, a sudden rush of intensity neither of them was prepared for. It left them both breathing hard, holding each other in something suspiciously close to a hug. 

Kaine hooked his chin over Vance's shoulder, his unshaven jaw scraping ticklishly over Vance's neck. It was deliberate; he liked rubbing his stubbled face over Vance's cheek and jaw, more like an overgrown cat than a spider, where the burn would be covered by his cowl in costume.

Vance huffed a laugh, because no way had Kaine missed how that made his cock jump, what with their being plastered all over each other; and that had been exactly what he was going for. _Okay, we can be done talking for now._ That had actually been a lot more than Vance was expecting. Time to give a little.

Kaine apparently took this as a cue to let his hands drift down to Vance's ass. Vance's arm had wrapped around his neck, cradling his head while he rested his cheek against Kaine's shoulder. He smelled pretty good considering he never seemed to use cologne; and it proved that there was actually running water in this dump. Curious, Vance pushed up the sleeve of his shirt to see if he had had his tattoo filled in yet.

Solid blue. Vance wondered what the design meant to him, that he'd had it inked into his skin three times now. The shading had to be recent, but it already looked smooth and healed. 

Kaine started shuffling them out of the kitchen. With their legs slotted together like this, walking had some very interesting effects. By the time they reached the couch, they were both getting hard, Kaine's hands had moved inside Vance's pants, and Vance was working on opening Kaine's fly. 

The couch wobbled alarmingly as they hit it. Vance waited, but it didn't collapse. 

Kaine bit down on his lower lip and drew back slowly. "Still with me?"

"I don't trust the structural integrity of your furniture. And I'm using the loosest possible definition of the word furniture."

"Can we save the critique of my interior decorating for some other time? Like never?" Kaine asked plaintively. 

Vance looked at Kaine, kneeling over him, a little mussed, his thick cock making a damp spot on his underwear, and shut up. The couch had lasted this long, right? _It'll be fine._

"Sure. Later," Vance granted, chasing Kaine's mouth. Teasingly, he drummed his fingers once up the underside of Kaine's dick and let Kaine thrust into his palm a few times before reaching in and freeing his trapped length.

Slipping his thumb inside the foreskin, Vance circled the head. Kaine's eyes squeezed shut, and his hands clenched on the back of the couch. More of his cock was peeking out now. Vance slid the loose skin over it, watching as Kaine got harder and harder in his grip. 

His neck bowed until his forehead was resting against Vance's chest, hands stroking restlessly up under his shirt. Grunts rose from deep in Kaine's belly, eyes fixed intently on where his purpling cock was fucking Vance's fist. 

"Shit, that's hot," Kaine rasped. 

He had been quietly popping the buttons on Vance's shirt so it flapped open when he was dragged over sideways. Kaine's hands were already going for his fly when it registered on both of them that that groaning sound wasn't either of them and they should have stopped tilting by now. There was a sharp crack and a jolt as one of the couch's legs gave way. Vance opened his mouth.

"Don't fucking say it."

Vance closed his mouth again, but he couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up. Kaine growled irritably, and Vance suddenly found his back hitting the ceiling. Kaine caged him in, keeping him from falling. The breath caught in Vance's throat.

He opened his mouth to say something about the probable condition of the ceiling, but Kaine thrust his tongue into the middle of his sentence. _Asshole_ , Vance thought with a certain amount of fondness.

He got himself together enough to take on some of his own weight, tucking his legs up against Kaine's sides to keep them from dangling awkwardly. Kaine took advantage to start pulling off clothing, which fell with thumps to the floor. Vance had a brief moment of anxiety for his phone; but when you got blasted through walls for a living, you invested in a good case. 

Despite all the time he'd spent in the air, staring down at the floor and feeling the constant tug of gravity pressing him against Kaine added an extra spark of excitement, especially when Kaine had to take both hands away to untangle his cock from his boxers so he could kick them off. Spiders were very sticky, apparently, enough to keep both of them up there with only two points of attachment. 

Since Kaine was providing support, Vance figured it was only fair he did the rest of the work. It didn't take much to get their erections lined up, and then Vance could close his hand around them both. Kaine pulled in tighter to the ceiling, driving their rhythm faster with sharp thrusts of his hips.

Vance sped to keep up. Fluid leaking from their cocks slicked each stroke until they were sliding together smoothly through his grip. 

"C'mon." Kaine's voice was a rumble, breath puffing hot air into Vance's mouth. "Vance, come on, just like that."

Vance was doing his best to stay quiet; he tried to remember if he'd heard footsteps at any point from the apartment upstairs. Kaine worried the tendon that stood out between his neck and shoulder with his teeth as his arm worked. 

"Ohhh my god," Vance gasped, cracking his head off the ceiling. 

And there went the stubble again, rasping over the exposed skin of his neck. Then lips closing over his ear, wet, hot; the scrape of teeth. Rough Kaine might be, but his passion and sincerity were always just breath-taking. What he made Vance feel—he felt it so strongly, so deeply that skin to skin they were barely close enough to satisfy him.

"C'mon," Kaine repeated, freeing a hand to wrap over Vance's.

"Kaine." Vance squeezed his knees more tightly into Kaine's sides as he pushed up into their joined fist. They rocked together, everything building like the tension in a drawn rubber band. "I'm gonna—"

"You better." 

He did. Kaine pulled it out of him, jerking their cocks together in hard strokes. He stopped, but his hand didn't until they were both completely wrung out.

"I got us," Vance said gently after a minute. "You can let go."

Slowly, like he had to think about it, Kaine peeled first his feet, one after the other, and then his hand, off of the ceiling. Vance let their feet swing downwards, stretching his own legs out and in the process somehow separating himself from Kaine. He wondered a little at how much he didn't want to let go at all.

They drifted to the floor; Vance didn't trust his full weight to his legs until he was sure they were going to support him. Kaine gave a little experimental bounce, like a moonwalker. 

"You probably have to conserve hot water in this place, don't you?" Vance asked leadingly.

" _Hot_ water?" Kaine looked at him like he was crazy.

 _Oh, yeah; it's like ninety degrees out._ Vance forgot sometimes when he was filtering for humidity, which, it was either that or die in Houston. 

"But I do pay for water." There was a sly twinkle in Kaine's eye.

"We should definitely take that into consideration."

**Author's Note:**

> Le suprême bonheur de la vie, c'est la conviction qu'on est aimé; aimé pour soi-même, disons mieux, aimé malgré soi-même.
> 
> (The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.)  
>  _—Victor Hugo_


End file.
